‘Alita: Battle Angel’ review — A messy, but fun cyberpunk sci-fi adventure

Alita: Battle Angel boasts exhilarating action scenes and a breakout performance by Rosa Salazar, but buckles under the weight of its complex plot.

Alita: Battle Angel gets one very important thing right: robots fighting. Director Robert Rodriguez — best known for the Spy Kids and Sin City franchises — knows how to direct an action scene. Even though they’re hyper-stylized with seemingly endless slow-motion CG shots, all of the setpieces have forward momentum, grounding in character, and are easy to follow — no Bourne Identity shaky camera to be found.

That’s why he was the perfect fit to tackle the long-gestating adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s classic manga Battle Angel Alita. Taking place in the 26th Century as the cheeky opening logos set, Alita: Battle Angel follows a disembodied core — think of it as a brain and heart in one — who is found and given a new body by Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz). With no memory of the post-apocalyptic world she wakes up in or her name, Dr. Ido names her Alita.

Rosa Salazar plays the cyborg heroine through a surprisingly strong motion-capture performance that translates her facial expressions and emotions vividly. Much of the first 30 minutes is dedicated to world building. We’re introduced to a cyberpunk version of Earth where many people have been fused with machinery and dream to make it to Zalem — a utopia floating above their crumbling city.

The world is fantastically realized. From the costumes to the production design to the character design, every detail feels perfectly drawn out.

However, for all the great directing and visuals on display, Alita has one very obvious flaw — and it’s a flaw one of the movie’s contributor brings to all his movies. That contributor is James Cameron and the flaw is the screenplay. As is evident in every screenplay he’s written — Avatar and Titanic being the most notable — Cameron completely overthinks every aspect of the story. That’s why Alita is inundated with clunky exposition throughout the entire running time.

It’s a delight to watch Alita play the role of the girl in an alien world discovering new things — she takes a bite of an Orange peel! And she’s never had chocolate! But the attempt to also introduce the main characters and get the plot of the ground end up derailing any of the goodwill being built up from Salazar’s stellar performance.

Eventually, Alita meets Hugo (Keean Johnson), a fully human boy who teaches her the ropes of Earth. He also helps her piece together the mystery of her past. But it’s not all fun and games.

Alita learns that Dr. Ido is also a hunter-warrior — a league of dangerous bounty hunters who will do anything to collect their payment. After following him out one night, Alita and Ido are attacked by a group of cyborgs who almost kill Ido. However, out of nowhere, Alita fights (and destroys) them using an incredible fighting technique and astonishing strength.

It catches the eye of Vector (Mahershala Ali) — a man who rigs Motorball combat matches (think of it as roller derby with robots) — who is being used a vessel for Nova — the man who controls Zalem and keeps a close eye on Earth. He takes notice of Alita and wants her dead, to which he tasks the massive cyborg Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley) with.

There are multiple intersecting storylines including one involving another hunter-warrior cyborg called Zapan (If Beale Street Could Talk’s Ed Skrein — quite good here) and Ido’s ex-wife Dr. Chiren (Jennifer Connelly — the best of the supporting cast), but it all ends up being incredibly muddled as the screenplay switches and loses focus constantly.

When the movie is focused on Alita and her journey of self-discovery in the face of real danger from Nova and Grewishka, it works. Unfortunately, that journey is often cast to the side.

A lot of the emotional core of the movie falls to the relationship between Hugo and Alita. Salazar does her best with the material — a lot of which feels forced. Johnson, on the other hand, stumbles often and doesn’t make a compelling romantic or heroic lead. Because of that, there’s a lack of chemistry between the pair that sucks the life out of any character development — we’re being told they care for each other instead of being shown.

If Alita: Battle Angel stopped thinking and just delivered great robot fighting action with a simple, but compelling, plot, it would be a fantastic exercise in sci-fi instead of an over-complicated mess. I appreciate so much of what Rodriguez is doing. He should have been allowed to let his imagination run wild. Instead, it felt like he kept getting dragged back down to Earth by the screenplay.

Alita: Battle Angel comes out a little bit better than the similarly high-concept sci-fi action-adventure Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets mostly thanks to Salazar’s performance and Rodriguez’s masterful handling of the action sequences. I think it bodes well for a sequel that won’t be burdened with world building. This is a great story. It’s just not told the way it deserves.

Alita: Battle Angel will be in theaters on February 14th.